When watching live TV, many people like to switch between one or more program channels. Typically, when encountering a commercial, e.g., advertisement, they will change channels and view a program to which they switched until the end of the commercial break on the original channel and then change the channel back to what they were previously watching. Sometimes the channel to which they change and/or the channel they were originally watching is also displaying a commercial at the time a channel switch is made. Channel switching and decoding or tuning sometimes taking as long as 5 seconds which can cause a user to end up wasting his/her time flipping between channels. This can be a very frustrating user experience.
Users often tend to want to flip between channels during commercial breaks. Unfortunately, commercials tend to often be displayed as roughly the same time on many channels. Thus as a user flips from one channel to another channel as part of a channel surfing operation initiated on a channel the user was viewing, the user is confronted with yet another commercial. While at least some channels will not be displaying a commercial at the time other channels are displaying commercials, the flipping to one or more channels with commercials being displayed can be frustrating particular when the channel surfing was initiated during an ongoing commercial, e.g., with the objective of avoiding to have to watch a commercial.
In view of the above it should be appreciated that there is a need for methods and apparatus which would facilitate switching between channels and/or channel surfing operation whereby a user can decrease the probability of switching to a channel with a commercial and/or avoid channels with ongoing commercials altogether.